TRENTON — Steve Lonegan, the Republican candidate in the special election for the U.S. Senate, and his wife earned a total of $1.03 million in the three-year period from 2010 to 2012, according to tax returns released by his campaign today.

Last year was the most profitable for Lonegan, who in that period served as state director of the conservative group Americans for Prosperity. Together his wife Lorraine, a catholic school teacher, the couple earned $515,280, including $278,303 from the sale of an office building that used to house his cabinet-making business.

Will Gattenby , a spokesman for the campaign, said the tax returns showed that Lonegan , a former mayor of Bogota, in Bergen County, was a successful small businessman who is now capitalizing on the fruits of his labor.

“I think the three years of Steve Lonegan’s tax returns are going to show Mayor Lonegan made his money in small business and private investment,” Gattenby said.

The campaign obscured the addresses of Lonegan's rental assets, including the remaining two parcels he owns and the location of the sale property "to protect the renters."

Over the three years, Lonegan and his wife earned, on average, $180,132 a year from salaries and $374,588 from capital gains, mostly derived from last year's property sales.

Before selling one of the three properties, they generated more than $500,000 a year in rental income, nearly all of which was offset by such expenses as utilities, legal fees, repairs and property taxes.

Lonegan's Democratic opponent in the Oct.16 election, Mayor Cory Booker of Newark, gave reporters three hours to review 15 years of his tax returns last Friday.

Booker's returns showed he made $472,571 last year, mainly from speaking engagements around the country.

Booker earned an average income of more than $260,000 a year over the past 15 years. He supplemented his income from the city of Newark – which ranged from $83,000 in 2006 to $152,000 in 2011 – with speaking fees.

The mayor's speaking fees have risen sharply since 2006, when they totaled just over $10,000. In 2011, he collected more than $406,000 from speaking fees.